If You Liked School, You'll Love Work - Softcover

Welsh, Irvine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099483599 ISBN 13: 9780099483595

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2008

Synopsis

These five stories remind us that Welsh is a master of the shorter form, a brilliant storyteller and, unarguably, one of the funniest and filthiest writers alive.

In Rattlesnakes, when three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, how is it that one find himself performing fallatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline and two armed Mexicans?

Who is the mysterious Korean chef who has moved in with Chicago socialite Kendra Cross, in The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park, and what does he have to do with the disappearance of her faithful pooch, Toto?

In the title story, can Mickey Baker, an English bar-owner on the Costa Brava, manage to keep all his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid Teresa’s body weight at the sexual maximum while attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his persistent ex-wife and a pair of Spanish gangsters?

In Miss Arizona, Raymond Wilson Butler is writing a biography of a legendary U.S. movie director. By what train of events does he end up as a piece of movie memorabilia?

And how, in The Kingdom of Fife, will Jason King — diminutive ex-trainee jockey and Subbuteo star of Cowdenbeath — fare in the world of middle-class female equestrians?

About this title

About the Author

Irvine Welsh is the author of seven previous works of fiction, including The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs. He lives in Dublin.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Trainspotting gives a master class in gallows humor in his first story collection since The Acid House (1995). Three of the five stories take place in the U.S., and Welsh relishes punishing ugly Americans. In Rattlesnakes, a trio of vapid hedonists lost in the desert are forced to perform sexually degrading acts by an unhinged illegal immigrant, while The DOGS of Lincoln Park finds a bitchy Chicago princess throwing a hissy fit over her missing papillon, Toto, who she fears has landed in her Korean neighbor's crock pot. Page-turners both, but the characters are too easily satirized. More likable is the narrator of Miss Arizona, an aspiring auteur whose interviews with his filmmaker hero's ex-wife turn increasingly creepy. Welsh shines in the title story, about an ex-pat skirt-chasing bar owner in the Canary Islands, and the novella, The Kingdom of Fife, set in a glum Scotland town. Narrative duties in the last are shared by wee Jason King, a former jockey and current compulsive masturbator and table football champion, and Jenni Cahill, a horse jumper and local gangster's daughter. That a story featuring a gruesome decapitation, dogfighting, equine death and rampant wanking can produce such an amiable effect is testament to Welsh's delightful degeneracy. (Sept.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0099483599
• ISBN 13: 9780099483595
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400